The Road to Cannonball

A bonus of finishing Cannonball is that my “Visited States” map, at least the states I’ve visited on a scooter, looks much more impressive than it used to.

Every morning since the race ended, I’ve woken up (sometimes in the wee hours) in a panic, thinking that there’s one leg left in the race, and I have to get ready and go or I’ll lose. After a few minutes, I come to my senses and realize that the race is long over, and I can go back to sleep. Still, it’s creepy that all my anxieties from before and during the race are still haunting me almost a week later. I’m sure it will pass eventually. I’m just surprised, that’s all.

I went to the shop yesterday and tried to address some of the damage to Plan B. I cleaned off 90% of the bug guts, but I couldn’t motivate myself to do much in the way of repairs. Mostly, I stared at the bike wondering what to do next, and ended up not getting much done at all. I did manage to take my extra rims down to West Coast Powdercoat in South San Francisco, but then went back to my shop and started second guessing the color choice I had given them. Oh well.

I think maybe I’m burned out on scooters for now. I’d really like to go for a leisurely ride by myself, but all my scooters are in need of major repair, and I don’t think I have the energy or interest to fix them right now.

Maybe I’ll go cruise BMW’s website for a while. 

Made it home at long last. Tired, weary, and absolutely sure I won’t be signing up to drive the support truck home next time.

It’s really good to be home.

This shot was taken in the wilds of Wyoming. We’re in Utah now, driving as fast as we can to get home.

Rich and I are going to try to shove Rolf behind the seat in the truck for the three-hour ride to the airport. Not sure what we’re going to do with all the crap inside the truck while Rolf is in there, but Rich assures me he can make it work.

Now I’ll get to see the country in reverse, and perhaps with a little less pressure.

Sorry this update is late, but there was drinking to be done last night.

The day started early because of the need to make public appearances later in the day, and we were all a little hung over from the night before. It was also cold, and very very foggy. Rich and I rode with Bobo for a little while, but he can be a demon in the curves when he wants to be, and he quickly outpaced Rich and myself and disappeared into the fog. I was terrified on the damp roads, and I couldn’t see anything through my fogged-up visor. In other words, I rode like a terrified newbie. Inclement conditions are definitely a weak spot in my riding skill set.

Once the sun came out and burned off the fog, I was okay and picked up some speed. I started the day about 75 minutes ahead of Joel, and I knew he would pick up some time. I only had to go fast enough to avoid losing too much time, and not so fast that I would get pulled over by the police, which would definitely put my lead in jeapordy.

Joel got to White’s Ferry about 20 minutes ahead of me, where the clock was temporarily suspended for one leg while we rode with the area scooterists who came out to meet us.

After a group ride around DC and some pizza at Vespa Washington, we started the clock again at the National Arboretum. There were only 140 miles left in one leg to the finish line, and they were easily the most stressful of the entire race. I was paranoid that something would go wrong on the final leg that I wouldn’t be able to recover from… That the bike would break, or I would get pulled over, or that traffic would hold us up. I just knew something would go wrong.

But nothing did. The bike held up, and traffic flowed reasonably well. In fact, something unexpectedly wonderful happened: a group of Hyabusa riders flew past us, theoretically clearing any potential police threat from the road ahead. This allowed Rich and I to sail along at 75 with relative ease.

I did slow down more and more as we got closer to the finish, as I really didn’t want to get pulled over. That would have been relatively disastrous.

When I got to the hotel that was the designated finish line, I saw a group of people standing in the median with a sign that said “Go Joel”, which was the most wonderful thing I can imagine at that point. Even though the sign wasn’t for me, it was an indication that Joel hadn’t beaten me to the finish line with a secret East-Coaster shortcut to the finish line. He rolled in snout ten minutes later (with a broken headed pipe, no less) and I pretty much knew I had clinched it.

Even better, an MVer (whose name I forgot in the confusion) brought us a buttload of beer in the hotel parking lot. His name is forgotten, but his kindness is certainly not.

The rest of the evening was a blur of drinking and trying to find some food in this godforsaken vacation trap they call Ocean City. At the end, Patrick tabulated the numbers and confirmed that I had won my class by forty minutes.
w00t!

One more really important point before I turn in for the evening: I have a really great team here with me, and they have helped me immensely. Rich, in particular, has instructed me for the last year or so in all things Cannonball. What to bring, what to expect, what’s important and what’s not. I couldn’t have even gotten to the starting line without him.

This morning, at 5:30am, he called me and told me we had to switch variators. He had a fresh Polini with fresh weights, and I was running a fresh stock variator. He knew that I had to compete with Joel today to keep my lead, and that I would need all the help I could get. Since he wasn’t in the running, he gave me his variator. Talk about taking one for the team. Thanks, Rich. I owe you one. Big time.

Made it to Oakland, MD today. My goal for the day was to not lose much time to Joel, who is a better rider on a faster bike. Were it not for his crash and one big navigation error, he would surely be in the lead right now. He has ridden exceptionally well throughout CB, and the way he’s been able to climb back up the rankings reflects that. My only big advantage is my gas tank and some comfort factors that let me stay in the saddle longer.

That coupled with some road closures today was enough to keep my lead, even though Joel beat me to the hotel by ten minutes or so. It was actually kind of fun trying to cope with the many obstacles today that Joel so handily dealt with as I struggled to keep up. In the end, I reached the limit on the chances I was willing to take, and let him go about 50 miles from the finish line. He flat-out outrode me, though, no doubt about it. Tomorrow is three timed legs and one parade leg, which will be a tour of DC. I think it’ll be cool, but I have some apprehension about the traffic that we are likely to get stuck in.

Made it to Cincinnati in one piece. I have some family in this neck of the woods, so they came out and took me out to dinner. Mmmmm… jumbo margarita.

Todays ride was brutal. It was long, getting out of St Louis was difficult, getting into Cincinnati was difficult, and the road in between had too many small towns and too many semi trucks. That said, there were some nice parts to the ride, and I rode much of the day with Patrick.

I didn’t really push it very hard today. My bike is ailing and I’m exhausted. As a result, Joel has taken second place and might be in the general vicinity of catching me. He gained something like 30 minutes today. If he keeps that up, he might just take the lead.

I’m not entirely sure I care at this point.

So the highlight of todays ride was blasting through “42″. Not sure if that refers to a county road or a state highway, but it’s basically a narrow country road that meanders through the backwoods of MO for miles and miles, with a 55mph speed limit. It was really an exceptional ride, and certainly one of the highlights of the trip.

Once we got to St Louis, we converged on Vespa St Louis and proceeded to create mass chaos in their service area. The mechanics swapped Joel’s engine from his wrecked GTS into Bobo’s GTV, Maroy got a new tire, Bagel did some variator work, Oz changed his oil, many people helped Rob rebuild the carb on his Buddy, Rtich changed oil and put a new rqear tire on, and I went back to the stock variator and changed my oil.

I had put stock weights in my Polini variator yesterday, and that appears to be a bad combination. When I inspected it today, the belt had eaten into the engine case a bit, and there was a dollop of sludge right at the seam between the engine case and the oilpan, right where the belt rubs. This might be really bad. If oil gets in there, my belt will start slipping. Plus, I’ll lose oil all day.

Not sure what to do about this. I think more inspection is needed before I do anything rash like pulling the oilpan off.

Made it to St Louis. It was a short ride today, and I took a shortcut after all my checkpoints had been fulfilled for the day. Still very tired, though. I need to find some food and then head to Vespa St Louis, if dome more people show up.

It’s a party. A chaotic party, but a party nonetheless.

Got word today that Vespa St Louis is staying open late and offering us the use of their facilities to wrench on our bikes. Rock on! Rumors of pizza have floated around, and I’m definitely looking forward to it.

For you folks in the St Louis area, come on down on Wednesday afternoon and say hi, and try not to be alarmed by the way we smell.

Today went well. I think I made up some of the time I lost yesterday, and caught every single rider, although I lost Joel again at the end. I rode much of the day with glasseye, although we both had instances of my-bike-is-slower-than-yours-itis for no apparent reason. I wish we understood why the GTS engine is so finnicky, with two different engines regularly changing in performance compared to an identical one running under the same conditions. Glasseye and I repeatedly shrugged (or gave each other the finger) as the other would get an unexplained speed burst and pull away from the other. There is Officially something wrong with the GTS engine design that makes it irregular.

No real surprises for me today. The route was long and not especially scenic, unless you like prairie country. It is beautiful in its own way, but the Rockies are a hard act to follow.

The town we’ve stopped in (Fort Scott) found out we were coming, and is having a welcoming party (complete with band) in our honor. It’s a little weird, frankly. We’ve been completely anonymous in every other town so far, and to have a reporter hunt us down in the parking lot shortly after we arrived gave me yet more Kansas-induced shivers. The local chamber of commerce even supplied the hotel with welcome packets specifically for us, with a letter addressed to us inviting us to the welcoming party.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone here has been exceptionally nice. Fort Scott seems like a nice little town. The lack of anonymity is just hard for me to adjust to.

I ended up skipping the party, as my bike desperately needed a new belt, rollers, and a fresh rear tire. I wore through the Michelin Pilot City 140 in well under 2000 miles, which is a bit surprising. Joel snapped a belt on Bobo’s bike yesterday, consistent with past Cannonball reports for Day Five. I figured I was living on borrowed time. Bagel changed his variator last night and found his Polini rollers were seriously flat, and the variator itself was damaged. I decided to inspect mine today, and sure enough the rollers were nearly mangled. Fortunately, the variator itself was in good shape.

Just trying to learn lessons wher I can find them.

Made it to Fort Scott, KS today. Alive and in one piece. There is some kind of welcoming party here that we haven’t met yet, with band and whatnot. I have to work on my bike tonight, though, so not sure I’ll be partaking.
More later, maybe.

Halfway done.
We made it to Kansas today, and I think we’ll be in Kansas tomorrow as well. It’s kind of flat here. And weird, too. I got the creeps today at Wal Mart, buying beer and supplies. It didn’t help that I rode in on a scooter, and was dressed in some weird Mad Max Wanabe outfit, black from head to toe with a purse-like thing strapped to my thigh, so I totally get that everyone was staring at me. Still, there was a very weird vibe there that gave me the shivers. I think it’s perhaps unsettling for me to see such overt signs of religion all around. I grew up in a semi-rural part of Ohio, so it’s not really that part that creeped me out. I “get” rural. This was different than my own rural experience.

Anyway, today I missed a turn due to the road I was supposed to take being conveniently missing, my GPS wanting me to take the nonexistant road instead of the overpass that has long since replaced it. I wasn’t paying attention to the signs, and I missed it completely. My GPS tried to reroute me after that, but things got convoluted in a hurry, and I ended up going up and down one section of highway repeatedly trying to find a way to the other side of a river, without success. Finally, I retraced my steps and found the signs that led me to the correct overpass, and I got back on track and hit the checkpoint I was supposed to hit. I probably lost 20 minutes to that blunder, and so by the end of the day maroy (in second place) got a bit closer to first.

I’ve been trying very, very hard to run a perfect race. I want to make sure that I do everything by the book, cleanly record all times with photographic evidence as close to the checkpoint as I can get, and not make any mistakes. Today, I made a mistake, and I’m pissed at myself for it.

Just got to Garden City, Kansas. Aside from some navigational issues, it was an uneventful day. More later.